New guidelines for posting on Elm-discuss

[Noah Hall]

Hi folks,

We've come up with some new rules for posting on elm-discuss. You can see them here. The goal is to have a healthier, happier mailing list, with more people feeling like they want to take part.

[Dustin Farris]

LGTM —

One thing that trips me up is deciding where to post what.

Slack/Reddit/elm-discuss/elm-dev are all super helpful (and Twitter sometimes), but I hit decision fatigue trying to decide which medium to reach for on a case-by-case basis—I suspect I'm not the only one.

The community page briefly describes the options, but doesn't really emphasize any one over the other.

There is some direction in a recent post from Evan suggesting that we use Reddit more.  What is the general mood on that?

IMO — if there was stronger up-front guidance/clarity on this I think it would be helpful for me and other newcomers.

Dustin

On May 4, 2017, at 3:33 PM, Noah Hall <enal...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks,

We've come up with some new rules for posting on elm-discuss. You can see them here. The goal is to have a healthier, happier mailing list, with more people feeling like they want to take part.

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Dustin Farris

[John Orford]

I love your work Noah and appreciate the sentiment.

But... I think elm-discuss is quite nice.

I haven't seen anything egregious, and rather free form discussion rather than pointing people to the rule book every once in a while.

From my POV almost everyone comes with the right attitude here.

On Fri 5. May 2017 at 03:33, Noah Hall <enal...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks,

We've come up with some new rules for posting on elm-discuss. You can see them here. The goal is to have a healthier, happier mailing list, with more people feeling like they want to take part.

--

[Noah Hall]

Hi Dustin,

Regarding where to post, my personal recommendation is to choose Slack
first. It has the largest community and problems get answered very
quickly. People will also direct you to the right place if you're not
sure. Regarding guidelines, we have discussed this quite a bit, and
this post is the first step in that direction.


Hi John,

This post aims to address problems faced by other members of the
community which made them feel unwelcome. In particular:

- People being aggressive/demanding/generally not nice
- People posting too much info and/or sidetracking discussions

These guidelines are intended to set out the correct things to post
here, and the correct way to post here. Now nobody should be surprised
if they are banned for personal attacks, or if a thread gets locked
when it gets too far off track.

The goal is to have a discussion forum that everyone feels they can
take part in.

[Mark Marlow]

John,

I tend to agree that the discourse isn't a problem. However, one can't help but notice that there is a perception of hostility in this community, e.g.

https://elixirforum.com/t/front-end-development-options-2017/3832/2

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and we all need to take ownership of the community we're a part of.

Noah, thanks for pulling this together and hope this is a first step in improving our community.

M

[John Orford]

I remember reading that post from Overmind and thinking it v odd.

Maybe I am blind or have rose coloured glasses.

Unsure whether Noah's rule book will help or hinder. But good that he cares.

[Noah Hall]

For contrast, consider the Elm community on Slack. Friendly and
welcoming, all kinds of questions get answered. Here, flamewars and
personal attacks happen far too often, and it's really giving Elm a
bad name, despite being a minority of people.

[Dave Rapin]

The problem with slack is that discussions are lost after you hit their limit (which wasn't terribly high last time I checked). So instead of finding / googling for an answer / question that had previously been covered, you must ask again, which is of course async and therefor more time consuming.

I don't mean to seem anti-social, but if I'm in the middle of solving a problem and run into an issue, I reach for Google way before I'd post on Slack. Slack just feels like a black hole where information goes to die.

[Dave Rapin]

Just found out about https://elmlang.slackarchive.io so this is potentially a non-issue.

[Rex van der Spuy]

On Sunday, May 7, 2017 at 1:06:14 AM UTC-4, Dave Rapin wrote:

The problem with slack is that discussions are lost after you hit their limit (which wasn't terribly high last time I checked). So instead of finding / googling for an answer / question that had previously been covered, you must ask again, which is of course async and therefor more time consuming.

I don't mean to seem anti-social, but if I'm in the middle of solving a problem and run into an issue, I reach for Google way before I'd post on Slack. Slack just feels like a black hole where information goes to die.

I agree 100%.

The other problem is that there are so many channels that you never know where to post your question.

And, you have to hope there is someone online at that very moment with the skills or interest to help you, otherwise your question scrolls away into eternity.

So far, I've found Reddit to be the best forum for Elm Q&A - questions always net some big fish and petty quibbles get down-voted out of the way.

[Noah Hall]

Please move this discussion to another thread.

[Erik Lott]

Noah, a general code of conduct is a great idea, even if nothing other than to point at if a sensitive topic begins to get heated. Great job bud.

I tend to have the same opinion of Slack (we use it in house). Slack is an indispensable collaboration tool, but it makes a less than perfect message board - everything being so ephemeral. I think this is why most communities tend to have both. They're both solid tools for their intended usage.

Keep it up!